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William David Ross and Michael Vickers

Abacus (ἄβαξ, ἀβάκιον), a counting-board, the usual aid to reckoning in antiquity. The Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans alike used a board with vertical columns, on which (working from right ...
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Abacus (ἄβαξ, ἀβάκιον), a counting-board, the usual aid to reckoning in antiquity. The Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans alike used a board with vertical columns, on which (working from right to left) units, tens, hundreds, or (where money was in question) e.g. ⅛ obols, ¼ obols, ½ obols, obols, drachmae, sums of 10, 100, 1,000 drachmae, and talents were inscribed. When an addition sum was done, the totals of the columns were carried to the left, as in our ordinary addition. The numbers might be marked in writing or by pebbles, counters, or pegs.

Robert Sallares

Abortion was controversial in antiquity. Doctors taking the Hippocratic Oath (see hippocrates (2)) swore not to administer abortifacients, but other Hippocratic texts suggest that prostitutes (see ...
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Abortion was controversial in antiquity. Doctors taking the Hippocratic Oath (see hippocrates (2)) swore not to administer abortifacients, but other Hippocratic texts suggest that prostitutes (see prostitution, secular) often employed abortion. A *Lysias fragment suggests that abortion was a crime in Athens against the husband, if his wife was pregnant when he died, since his unborn child could have claimed the estate. Greek temple inscriptions show that abortion made a woman impure for 40 days (see pollution).The Stoics (see stoicism) believed that the foetus resembled a plant and only became an animal at birth when it started breathing. This attitude made abortion acceptable. Roman jurisprudence maintained that the foetus was not autonomous from the mother's body. There is no evidence for laws against abortion during the Roman republic. It was common during the early Roman empire (e.g. Ov. Am. 2. 14), and was practised for many reasons, e.g. for family limitation, in case of *adultery, or because of a desire to maintain physical beauty.Less

Andrew Barker

5th-cent. theories about sound fall into two groups. Most though not all non-Pythagorean Presocratics were concerned primarily with the process of hearing (see especially Theophr. Sens.; ...
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5th-cent. theories about sound fall into two groups. Most though not all non-Pythagorean Presocratics were concerned primarily with the process of hearing (see especially Theophr. Sens.; cf. also Hippocr. De victu 1. 8 and 15 on hearing and voice). The Pythagoreans opened a musical perspective, beginning from observed correspondences between pitch-relations and the relative lengths of pipes or strings. They showed that the correspondences hold quite generally, through demonstrations using other sound-sources (see e.g. DK 18. 12, 13; texts attributing ‘experiments’ to Pythagoras himself are unreliable). The resulting hypothesis that pitch itself is a quantitative variable prompted deeper enquiries, beginning in the 4th cent., into the physical nature of sound, its causes, transmission, and attributes, as well as the process of hearing.

The Greeks did not recognise acoustics as a separate science; the issues were studied in other contexts, mainly by philosophers interested in sense-perception, by biologists and medical writers, and above all by harmonic theorists.

Andrew Barker

RE, of Aphrodisias, *Peripatetic philosopher (2nd cent. ce). His influential writings included commentaries on the order of *Aristotle's works (mainly philological); on Nicomachean Ethics and ...
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RE, of Aphrodisias, *Peripatetic philosopher (2nd cent. ce). His influential writings included commentaries on the order of *Aristotle's works (mainly philological); on Nicomachean Ethics and *Theophrastus' Characters (historical and literary); on Categories and on Physics; and on *Plato (1)'s Timaeus (mathematical and scientific, relating Pythagorean and Aristoxenian harmonics and contemporary astronomy to Platonic cosmology (see aristoxenus; pythagoras (1)).Less

John Scarborough

In *Alexandria (1) and Constantinople. He wrote an extant medical encyclopaedia, called the Tetrabiblon from its division into four sections. Beginning with a summary of drug theory (see ...
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In *Alexandria (1) and Constantinople. He wrote an extant medical encyclopaedia, called the Tetrabiblon from its division into four sections. Beginning with a summary of drug theory (see pharmacology), which simplifies many obscurities in *Galen and *Oribasius, the Tetrabiblon compacts pharmacy, *dietetics, general therapeutics, hygiene, bloodletting, cathartics, prognostics, *pathology, fevers, urines, cranial ailments, eye problems (see ophthalmology), *cosmetics, and *dentistry (bks. 1–8). Unavailable are well edited editions of bks. 9–16, containing important accounts of toxicology (bk. 13), and *gynaecology and obstetrics (bk. 16; see childbirth).

J. T. Vallance

Agathinus (Claudius Agathinus) a Spartandoctor of the 1st cent. CE, associated with the medical sect of the *Pneumatists and by at least one ancient source with the establishment of an ...
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Agathinus (Claudius Agathinus) a Spartandoctor of the 1st cent. CE, associated with the medical sect of the *Pneumatists and by at least one ancient source with the establishment of an eclectic medical sect founded on Pneumatism with additional doctrines from medical Empiricism and *Methodism. He was a pupil of *Athenaeus (3) of Attaleia, and was linked with the Stoic philosopher L. *Annaeus Cornutus. He may have taught the physicians *Archigenes and *Herodotus (2). Fragments of his doctrines are reported by *Galen and *Oribasius, amongst others. He wrote influential works on pulsation (grudgingly praised by Galen, 8. 748 Kühn), on semi-tertian fevers, and on the use of hellebore; little is now known of their contents.

Edward Courtney and R. A. Kaster

Albinus (2) writer on music, geometry, and dialectic, probably identical with Ceionius Rufius Albinus (PLRE 1 ‘Albinus’ 14), the consul of ce 335, and perhaps with the poet of works ...
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Albinus (2) writer on music, geometry, and dialectic, probably identical with Ceionius Rufius Albinus (PLRE 1 ‘Albinus’ 14), the consul of ce 335, and perhaps with the poet of works entitled De metris and Res romanae; one fragment of each survives.

R. Halleux

Of ancient texts on Greek alchemy there survive two papyri, three vast corpora of differing date and content, and a few isolated treatises. (a) Papyrus X from Leiden and the Stockholm papyrus can be ...
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Of ancient texts on Greek alchemy there survive two papyri, three vast corpora of differing date and content, and a few isolated treatises. (a) Papyrus X from Leiden and the Stockholm papyrus can be dated by handwriting to the early 4th cent. ce. They are two parts of the same collection of recipes for gold, silver, precious stones, and purple, compiled from older works and, in particular, citing *Democritus. (b) Corpus M, the MS Marcianus graecus 299, now in Venice, was copied in the 11th cent., probably in Constantinople. Damaged, although a full table of contents survives, it is a compilation of texts probably formed at the court of the emperor Heraclius (7th cent.) on the initiative of one Theodorus, a court dignitary and associate of Stephen of Alexandria. (c) Corpus B, the MS Parisinus graecus 2325, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, from the 13th cent., of unknown provenance: a collection of texts perhaps formed in the time of *Psellus (11th cent.Less

Heinrich von Staden

Alexander (15) Philalethes (‘Truth-lover’), a physician (fl. later 1st cent. bce?), succeeded *Zeuxis (3) as leader of the Asian branch of *Herophilus's ‘school’. Alexander's views on digestion, on ...
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Alexander (15) Philalethes (‘Truth-lover’), a physician (fl. later 1st cent. bce?), succeeded *Zeuxis (3) as leader of the Asian branch of *Herophilus's ‘school’. Alexander's views on digestion, on various diseases, and on invisible ducts (πόροι) dispersed throughout the body have much in common with those of *Asclepiades (3) of Bithynia, as the Anonymus Londinensis and the Methodists recognized. However, only one problematic later Latin source explicitly identifies Alexander as a ‘pupil’ (discipulus) of Asclepiades. In his Gynaecia Alexander asserted that there are no diseases peculiar to women, thus siding with both Herophilus and Asclepiades on this controversial issue (see apollonius (10) mys; demetrius (21) of apamea; erasistratus). He agreed with Herophilus and Aristotle that male ‘seed’ (σπέρμα) has its origin in the blood. In his doxographic work Τὰ ἀρέσκοντα (‘Opinions’), he made an influential distinction between an ‘objective’ and a ‘subjective’ definition of the pulse. He argued for a modified ‘objective’ version of the pulse definitions advocated by the Herophileans *Bacchius, *Zeno (7), and *Chrysermus.Less